


Angels Fall First I: When the Levee Breaks

by tfm



Series: Angels Fall First [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Case Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 16,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the town of Ridgeview, people are being abducted, tortured and released, their minds shattered. Meanwhile, Emily tries to deal with the events of the past, and her own fractured mental state.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When the Levee Breaks

** _A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved_ **

_Kurt Vonnegut_

ONE

Derek Morgan watched JJ with some intensity. The content of the phone conversation she was engaged in would determine whether or not the BAU would be getting shipped off on another case. It felt as though there were far too many of them, and they never seemed to end particularly well, solve rate aside.

‘I understand,’ she said, nodding. ‘We can be there by tonight.’

Morgan sighed as JJ hung up. Even an extra half hour of solace would have been nice. ‘Briefing room, ten minutes,’ she told him, before heading in the direction of Hotch’s office.

‘What was that about?’ asked Prentiss from behind him. She had just walked in, apparently, coffee in one hand.

‘Briefing in ten. I thought you were off until Thursday?’ he enquired.

‘I got bored,’ she replied, somewhat sheepishly.

‘Are you alright to be back?’

‘I passed the psych evaluation.’

Morgan did not press the matter further. He knew she wouldn’t be here if she couldn’t handle it. Together, they headed to the briefing room, chatting idly until the arrival of Rossi, Hotch and JJ. According to Prentiss, Reid was taking another week at the suggestion of the Bureau psychologist.

‘Kid needs a break,’ agreed Morgan. ‘I could do with one too,’ he mused.

‘Well that’s never going to happen,’ commented Rossi upon entering with Hotch. The two had evidently been discussing something, though it was unclear what. JJ was right behind them, carrying a box with the word “RIDGEVIEW” scrawled on the side in black marker. Morgan quickly stood to help her, increasingly aware of the pregnant agent’s physical state.

‘Thanks, Morgan, but it’s just paper,’ she acknowledged. ‘I won’t be a complete invalid for another three months at least.’ From that, she seamlessly transitioned into the briefing. ‘Ridgeview, Maine. Population 19,000.’ She clicked, and several photos appeared onscreen.

‘Those aren’t crime scene photos,’ noted Morgan.

‘That’s because there aren’t any crime scenes,’ replied JJ. Several eyebrows rose at that. ‘At least, none with bodies at them. The town of Ridgeview has a serial kidnapper and torturer on his hands.’

‘What’s his M.O?’ asked Prentiss.

‘He kidnaps them, tortures them for anywhere between four days and three weeks, and then releases them. Of the seven victims so far, none have been able to provide any useful information.’

For several minutes, the team debated the reasons for such an M.O, ultimately deciding that they would need further information before being able to build a basic profile.

‘Wheels up in an hour,’ Hotch told his team. ‘Emily, could you stay back a minute, please.’

Prentiss shared a knowing glance with Morgan as he left the room in pursuit of his ready bag.

‘Are you sure you’re ready to be back?’ he asked.

She almost rolled her eyes; Hotch was that predictable sometimes. ‘The approval papers should have been faxed to you,’ she settled on.

‘They were. I’m not interested in psych evaluations and medical reports. I’m asking you straight. Are you ready to be back?’

‘Yes, sir. And...as long as we’re being straight?’ she looked straight into his eyes.

‘Yes?’

‘A cult is not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, sir.’ Her eyes held their gaze for a few more seconds before breaking off.

 


	2. Chapter 2

When the Levee Breaks

** _The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself._ **

_Garth Brooks_

TWO

‘Two pair,’ announced Morgan, laying his hand flat on the table, an insignificant four off to the side.

‘Full house,’ countered Prentiss, showing him her own cards.

‘I could’ve sworn you were bluffing.’ Morgan collected the cards to re-deal, shaking his head as he did so.

‘It’s the twitching,’ she agreed. ‘I think it’ll stop once the bruising goes down.’ Seeing the look on his face, she hastily added with a grin; ‘I think I’ll use it to my advantage for now.’

JJ returned from the jet’s bathroom, where she had been vigorously expelling her stomach contents. Turbulence hadn’t helped matters in the slightest; her face was a sickly green, and in her opinion, the sooner they landed, the better.

‘You want in?’ asked Morgan, still shuffling.

‘I think Hotch wanted us to get started on the profile,’ JJ said. The three of them steadily made their way to the back of the plane, where Hotch was video conferencing with Garcia.

‘Hey, gorgeous.’ The analyst’s voice emanated from the tiny laptop speakers.

‘Hey baby girl. What’ve you got?’

‘Well apparently the torture package came with complimentary video footage. Lots of it; it’ll take a while to get through, and I don’t think I can handle it. In spite of my awesomeness,’ she added.

‘You concentrate on the files themselves, Garcia. Where they came from, whatever you can find. We can handle the videos,’ Hotch assured her.

‘Thank you,’ Garcia said with sincerity. ‘Do you have the files on the victims?’

‘Our contact in Maine faxed them over,’ confirmed JJ. She nodded pointedly towards the RIDGEVIEW box that they still hadn’t looked at yet.

They split the files between them, looking for anything that stood out.

‘Seems like inconsistent victimology,’ commented Morgan. ‘I’ve got a 39-year-old female school teacher, and a 63-year-old male CEO.’

The other victims were similarly varied. Between them, they had ages ranging from 28 to 67, both genders, and several different occupations.

‘So why these victims?’ Hotch asked the question they were all thinking.

‘It might not be about the victim,’ suggested Prentiss. ‘Maybe the act of torture itself does it for him, so he just picks targets randomly.’

‘But these aren’t exactly low-risk targets. A police officer. A lawyer.’ Rossi held up the files in his hand.

‘Authority figures,’ Morgan suggested.

‘It can’t just be that. It’s too brutal. Authority figures who have wronged him in some way.’ Hotch skimmed over the files.

‘Morgan, Prentiss; I need you two to talk to the victims. Get what you can out of them. We need to move fast before he takes another one. Rossi and I will go over the video footage. See if we can find anything. Reid-‘ he paused momentarily and turned to JJ. ‘Did Reid ever show you how to do a Geographical profile?’

‘I only know the basics,’ admitted JJ. ‘We do need Reid.’ It was hard to admit, but the rest of the team knew it was true. Still, it was better to need Reid and not have him, than to bring him back too early and lose him altogether.

‘If we still haven’t solved this in a week, then he can fly up and meet us,’ conceded Hotch, though he too wondered if they actually would have this solved in a week without Reid.

There were two cars waiting for them at the airstrip. ‘Where do they get all these black SUVs from anyway,’ mused Morgan.

‘The black SUV factory?’ suggested Prentiss ‘The black SUV factory?’ suggested Prentiss. She, Morgan and JJ got into one SUV, Hotch and Rossi into the other. Reid’s absence was certainly taking its toll; emphasizing the seemingly gaping void between the junior and senior agents. They drove into town, hoping that they could still function properly as only five-sixths of a team.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

When the Levee Breaks

** _Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends._ **

_Czech Proverb_

THREE

Between the seven victims, almost fourteen hours of video footage had been recorded.

‘That’s not much, considering he had some of them for more than two weeks.’ Rossi pulled a chair over to one of the laptops, video ready to start. ‘Almost as if he’s whetting our appetites. Wants to make us beg for the _good_ stuff.’

‘We haven’t even watched the footage yet,’ pointed out Hotch, adjusting his headphones. Since the explosion, his hearing had slowly been on the mend. Still, too loud, and he could damage his ears permanently.

Rossi took note of this. ‘You could have had Morgan watch the footage. Or Prentiss. Hell, even JJ could have. We can’t function properly as a team if you lose your hearing.’

‘It’s fine, Dave.’

‘They don’t need mothering.’ Rossi easily picked up on what was left unsaid. Hotch may have been enigmatic at times, but Rossi had long since learned to read the younger man’s behavior.

At that moment JJ entered with one of the Ridgeview Detectives. The conference room’s whiteboard had been spirited away by someone, and finding it had been detective work in itself.

‘One of the IT guys had it,’ explained Detective Mitch Walters. ‘He was trying to show the front desk folks why it’s not a good idea to keep personal data on the hard-drives.’ Hotch nodded, and took the opportunity to begin watching the footage. Rossi soon followed suit.

*             *             *

Morgan’s knuckles rapped on an immaculately painted front door. Everything about the house was immaculate, really. No toys in the yard, grass neatly trimmed, garden perpendicular to the footpath. It was almost depressing to realize that however perfect it looked on the outside, the occupants themselves were irreparably damaged.

 ‘Hello?’ The door opened a crack, and a wary eye peered out. The security chain was fastened shut, in spite of the fact that it was only 4 in the afternoon.

‘SSA Morgan, this is SSA Prentiss. We’re with the FBI.’ They had chosen to conduct the interviews together. While it would take longer, it was more thorough, and it wasn’t as though they had anything else to do that night.

The security chain unfastened, and the door opened fully. The wary eye became a wary woman. She looked exhausted, which was understandable. No-one could ever really sleep again after what had happened.

‘Mrs. Bay?’ The wary woman nodded. ‘We’re investigating your husband’s kidnapping – would we be able to come in?’

Mrs. Bay nodded almost reluctantly, stepping back to allow them inside. Inside was just as perfect as outside; neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bay had properly left the house in quite a while, and the surplus of time had quite obviously been spent ensuring that every single corner of the house was dust free.

She offered them tea, or coffee, or water, or biscuits, or anything else that they might desire, all in a rambling sentence that seemed to go on forever.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ smiled Prentiss. Morgan similarly declined.

‘I understand you’ve told the local police about the ordeal, ma’am, but we need to hear it from you again.’

Mrs. Bay nodded glumly, and grasped at Morgan’s proffered hand. If she hadn’t, then it seemed likely that she might have gotten up to start cleaning in the middle of their conversation.

‘It was almost four months ago. Bert – my husband – he was taking out the trash, and then...gone. I didn’t even hear anything. At first I thought he might have stormed off – we’d been arguing a bit earlier that night, but I thought he had cooled down. I called his office – that’s where he goes when he’s feeling angry. I think all the work calms him down. He wasn’t there. I called again the next morning, and his secretary – Shelley – told me she hadn’t seen him in a week, but she’d been on leave, so that wasn’t unusual. And then I called the barber’s, because he’d been considering cutting his hair, but he wasn’t there. I called his sister – she lives a few miles away with her son – but she hadn’t seen him either. I called a few more people – I have a list here somewhere – but none of them had seen Bert.’

‘Is that when you called the police?’

‘Yes – I told them that he wouldn’t just run off like this, that something must have happened. They wrote down everything I said, and they promised they’d get back to me. Two weeks later, and they still weren’t any closer to finding him. Then suddenly I see Bert walking – stumbling up the front path – I’d been trimming the hedges that morning, and I still hadn’t raked up the debris, so he got it all over his feet. I called an ambulance, and I called the police, and they came, and they took Bert to hospital, and they said that he’d been tortured, and I told them I didn’t want to know the details, and a week later I brought Bert back home with me, but he hasn’t really been the same since. He lies in bed all day. Not talking, not doing anything. He just lies there. He was fired, too. They can’t do anything with a lawyer that doesn’t come in to work. I’ve been keeping us afloat on my salary, but I only work three days a week, and I have to take care of Bert, so it’s tough.’ She grasped Morgan’s hand a little tighter.

‘Would it be okay if we talked to Bert?’ asked Prentiss cautiously. To really get some insight into their unsub, they needed to talk to the victims, not just the families.

Mrs. Bay nodded. ‘He’s upstairs – third bedroom on the left. I’ve kept the curtains open, because I think he likes the afternoon sun. It makes him feel safer. The people at the hospital told me he wasn’t a danger to anyone else, so I could keep him here. Otherwise I’d have to have him in an institution, and I don’t think he would have liked that.’

‘I’ll stay with Mrs. Bay,’ Morgan responded to Prentiss’s questioning glance.

‘Please, call me Sarah.’ Prentiss heard as she transcended the staircase. ‘My great-aunt’s name was Sarah, but my mother li...’ The voice trailed into dulled sounds, muffled by distance. It was quieter upstairs. A strange sense of emptiness that could not even be punctured by Bert’s presence.

The door of the third bedroom on the left was wide open. Sun shone through the windows, making the large, bright room seem even larger and brighter. Bert – the sole occupant of the bed – did not seem to mind. He lay there, stared at the ceiling, an empty gaze on his face.

‘Mr. Bay?’ called Prentiss. He did not seem to stir. ‘Bert?’ she tried.

She walked up to the bed, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Bert? My name is Emily. I’m with the FBI.’

He had processed at least a little bit of the last sentence. His name, perhaps, and maybe hers. He looked up at her.

‘Has he taken you too? Is he making you see things? Do you feel the cold?’

‘Yes,’ she told him, trying to encourage him to keep talking.

‘He makes me see my wife. I see her, and I...I know it’s not her. It’s him, trying to hurt me even more. Don’t give into it. Everything will be okay. It’ll be okay.’ He broke off, and went back to staring at the ceiling. Disconnected from the world around him.

Prentiss looked down at Bert, but did not smile. ‘Everything will be okay,’ she repeated, though she wasn’t really sure if she believed it.


	4. Chapter 4

When the Levee Breaks

** _Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional._ **

_M. Kathleen Casey_

FOUR

It was almost 9pm before Morgan and Prentiss finished their victim interviews. Morgan had suggested coming back when it was light, but Prentiss – and the families of the victims themselves – seemed strangely eager to continue.

Some of the victims had been more responsive than Bert Bay, some less. The latest victim, who was still in hospital, was near catatonic.

‘Seven victims,’ exasperated Morgan. ‘Seven victims and we got nothing.’

In the hospital parking lot, Prentiss lit up a cigarette. Morgan stopped.

‘You smoking again?’

‘You’ve never seen me smoke,’ she reasoned.

‘You learned to hide it because your parents would have disapproved. But you can’t hide it from me,’ he winked. ‘You quit once, but you’ve started up again. In the last few days, I’d wager. And now you aren’t trying to hide it.’

Prentiss fingered the cheap lighter that she knew had been her giveaway. ‘There’s no reason to hide it.’

The two shared a few moments of silence before getting in the SUV and returning to the police station.

*             *             *

Hotch and Rossi were still going through the video footage once they got back. Still it was not as though they were hard pressed with finding something to do. There was still a list written on the whiteboard in JJ’s precise hand.

JJ had gone back to the hotel, one of the detectives told them. ‘She was feeling a bit sick.’

‘She went alone?’ Morgan asked.

‘I sent one of my patrol units with her. No-one should be alone around town these days.’

Morgan relaxed, and looked at the basic geographic profile that JJ had done. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to the locations of abduction.

‘It has to be something with the victims themselves,’ mused Morgan. ‘I think this is the kind of guy that would be going after the people he wants to kill, regardless of location.’

‘So...victimology. These people were once strong, in charge of their own life. Pretty self-confident. Now they’re shells.’ Prentiss began writing the notes of a preliminary profile in a spiral notepad.

‘He wants to feel in control. Degrade these people. Humiliate them. Hence, the torture videos.’

‘Where were they sent to?’ Prentiss asked Detective Walters, who was listening in with interested.

‘Burnt to disc and sent to the victims’ place of work. Wanted to make sure the people they worked with saw it.’ Walters scratched his nose in an attempt to hide the expression on his face. The penultimate victim had been a police officer. It was awkward to say that he’d watched the footage, but even more awkward to say that he still had no idea who had sent the discs.

‘Did you call the post office?’ Prentiss’s pen hovered over the pad, ready to make more notes if needed.

‘They’ve got no way of knowing who sent those things. But they were sent from that post office.’

Morgan nodded. It was still possible that they could do a geographic profile. He put a green pin in the map at the post office. It stood out amongst the red pins of abduction locations.

‘So he does frequent the area, if not live around here. He probably encountered his victims in the workplace. He’s got an occupation that brings him into contact with a whole variety of people. IT, maybe. Plumber. Electrician.’

‘I don’t think he works in IT.’ Prentiss looked up. ‘Look at the discs. If he wanted to make sure everyone saw them, he would have put the video onto the system, not sent a hard copy. Unless he knew that he couldn’t cover his own tracks.’

Morgan pulled out his phone, and speed-dialled Garcia. ‘Hey baby girl,’ he said. ‘You at the office?’

Uncharacteristically, Garcia’s voice sounded annoyed. It soon became clear why. ‘You just interrupted a romantic evening with bubbly drinks.’ Morgan could almost imagine her pouting.

‘You’re having a romantic evening without me?’ he put on a tone of mock hurt, which succeeded in returning Garcia to her cheerful state.

‘I did the analysis on the DVDs someone was kind enough to send me.’

‘And?’

‘Pretty basic stuff. You could make a DVD like that on any computer made within the last five years. No way of tracking it.’

‘Anything special about the files themselves?’ Morgan’s voice dropped.

‘Apart from being completely unsuitable for children? No, nothing that I could find.’

‘Alright baby girl. I’ll let you go. You behave yourself,’ he joked, hanging up.

‘So we’ve got nothing new from the DVDs,’ concluded Prentiss.

As if having been waiting for such a comment, Rossi chose that moment to make a comment. ‘Well we’ve got some stuff from the videos themselves.’ His eyes looked red, not specifically from the content of the video, but more so for the fact that he had been looking at a tiny screen for several hours. Hotch, it appeared, was still going. He looked up briefly to signal to them that he was almost finished.

‘What did you learn?’ asked Morgan.

‘He’s methodical. Same types of torture for each victim. The length of time differed between victims.’

‘What torture methods?’ Prentiss had her pen ready again.

‘Electric shock, Chinese water torture...’ Rossi continued for at least thirty seconds, with a variety of different torture methods.

‘Any clues as to the identity of the unsub?’

‘He was masked, for the whole thing. I don’t know if it was for the camera’s sake, or the victims.’

‘Probably both,’ said Morgan. ‘He’s not taking any unnecessary risks here. It’s important he gets his work done, but it’s just important that he doesn’t leave any tracks.’

‘We should reconvene in the morning,’ said Hotch, having just finished watching the video. His eyes looked similar to Rossi’s, and they both seemed ready to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

‘Have you two eaten?’ Morgan asked Hotch. ‘We were thinking of picking something up on the way back to the hotel.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Hotch, and Rossi gave a similar answer, declaring he would order room service.

‘I guess we’ll see you in the morning then,’ said Morgan, but Hotch had already left.


	5. Chapter 5

When the Levee Breaks

** _It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety._ **

_Isaac Asimov_

FIVE

Derek Morgan began his morning with leftover pizza and coffee. It had become evident that two pizzas _was_ too much for two people after a long day’s investigation, and the remainder had been squashed unceremoniously into the bar fridge next to the milk.

Ten minutes later, he met his fellow agents in the hotel parking lot. They all shared his tired demeanour, in spite of the eight hours sleep that most of them had received. Hotch and Rossi were talking in low voices, and Prentiss was on the phone standing off to the side. She hung up, just as Morgan arrived, and wordlessly got into the passenger’s seat of one of the SUVs. She was almost surprised when it was Rossi that got into the driver’s side. She regained her composure quickly, but not quickly enough for Rossi to miss it.

‘I thought you might be sick of Morgan asking you how you were doing every thirty seconds,’ he explained.

Faced with an ultimatum, Morgan had boarded the other SUV with Hotch and JJ. Rossi followed them out of the parking lot.

‘It’s not that bad,’ she reasoned, after a few seconds pause. ‘He’s a bit protective, but not obsessively so. I am sick of people asking, though,’ she added.

‘About twelve years ago,’ Rossi started, ‘I got shot in the arm by an unsub – cracked the bone. One of my colleagues – every day for two weeks, he’d ask me how I was going. He finally stopped when I “accidentally” whacked him in the head with my cast.’

Prentiss grinned at that. ‘So you’re saying I should just beat up anyone who asks?’ She had to admit, she wasn’t completely against the idea.

‘I would never suggest such a thing,’ he said.

He told a few more stories about his past cases – the man did have experience. It was almost as though if you took away the BAU, he wouldn’t have anything left. Though when it came down to it, you could have said that about any member of the team.

*             *             *

The local law enforcement officers listened in with what could only be described as enthusiasm. One of their own had been the last victim, and they wanted to put down the son of a bitch who made it treacherous to walk the streets at night.

Hotch took the lead, as was befitting his position of command. ‘We’re looking for a white male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. He’s narcissistic and feels under appreciated.’

‘We’re looking at an intelligent, organized offender,’ Morgan continued. ‘He’s methodical, and is careful not to be seen when kidnapping his victims. He likes to feel in control in order to make up for his perceived feelings. He’s looking to humiliate his victims – treat them as he feels they treat him. It’s likely that he met these people prior to the kidnappings, and he feels that they slighted him in some way. It’s also likely that this meeting occurred in a workplace environment.’

‘Due to the varied nature of the victims’ occupations, it’s likely that the unsub worked in a position where he would come into contact with a large range of people, such as a plumber, or a consultant.’

Prentiss added the finishing touches. ‘He is well-built, and probably drives an inconspicuous vehicle – he managed to overpower his victims, and get them away without anyone noticing. He may be impotent, as he was looking to humiliate his victims, and yet there were no signs of sexual assault.’

At that point, Detective Walters’s phone rang, causing everyone to look in his direction. ‘Yes? Oh...okay. Yes, yes, I’ll tell them.’ He hung up, and it didn’t take a profiler to know it wasn’t good news.

‘Someone else has gone missing. Steven Carmichael, thirty-nine.’

‘What was his occupation?’ asked Hotch, noticing the somewhat confused expression on Walters’s face.

‘He was a garbage truck driver,’ Walters revealed.

Rossi swore under his breath. ‘He’s escalating,’ he said.

 


	6. Chapter 6

When the Levee Breaks

** _Nothing can bring you peace but yourself._ **

_Ralph Waldo Emerson_

SIX

Morgan tried blissfully to ignore the smell of rotting garbage. It seemed to linger on the drivers, though they were a fair distance from the trucks themselves.

‘Steven have any enemies?’ It was the classic question – one that they always had to ask. In this case, though, he wasn’t sure it was going to do any good.

‘Nah. Steve, he’s a great guy, you know? Not the smartest of folks, but he had a great heart.’ Steven’s colleague had been quite forthcoming, if a little obnoxious. Steven had no enemies, no-one who might want to humiliate him for some reason, no skeletons in the closet.

‘When was the last time you saw Steven?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. He asks me if I wanna go grab a pizza with him. Hang out, you know? I woulda said yes, but I’ve got my kids this week. The ex is in Hawaii, tearing it up with some executive guy.’

‘Tough break.’ Morgan gave a sympathetic smile.

‘Not as tough as the break Steven’s getting, I’ll bet,’ he said. ‘Please, find him Agent Morgan. No-one deserves the shit that’s happening to these people. Especially not Steven.’

*             *             *

Prentiss had stayed behind at the police station with JJ, keen to re-examine the profile. While escalation was probable, it was also possible that they had gotten the profile wrong.

‘Why escalate now? Some kind of stressor, maybe.’

‘Natural progression?’ suggested JJ, not looking up from the files she was studying. Without Reid, their finding a connection between the victims would be a much slower process. JJ, unable to do field work, was perfectly suited, albeit disgruntled.

Something in JJ’s words struck Emily. Maybe it hadn’t been the unsub’s first escalation. Maybe he had been building up all along. The profiler pulled out her phone and called Garcia.

‘This is the Batcave. What can I do for Gotham City today?’

‘Unsolved kidnappings in Ridgeview. Cases in which the victim returned, but with no memory of their disappearance.’ To Garcia, Prentiss seemed uncharacteristically terse.

‘And hello to you too, Emily. That sounds like an episode of _Passions_. And, kidnap victims, no memory. Four cases, sending them now.’ Prentiss heard a mouse click in the background, and the subsequent beep from her own laptop on the desk.

‘Thanks Garcia. Goodbye.’

‘Ciao.’

Prentiss printed off the four cases, storing the folders carefully in her bag. ‘I’m going to go check out these kidnapping victims,’ she told JJ.

‘Be careful,’ said JJ.

‘Yeah,’ replied Prentiss in an offhand manner, but JJ was no longer listening.

*             *             *

Steven Carmichael lived alone in a small one-bedroomed apartment. He too had been abducted while taking out the trash. In this case, though, the bins were in the basement parking lot of the apartment building. It was difficult to get in – or out – without a keycard.

‘The unsub could live in the building,’ suggested Rossi.

‘If that’s the case,’ said Hotch, ‘He’s getting sloppy. It could explain the change in victimology, though.’

‘Three hundred people live in this building,’ Detective Walters commented. He had been talking to the building owner, who was shaken at the incident. ‘I got a list of names.’ He handed the list to Hotch, who pocketed it.

‘Do we need a key to use the elevator?’ Hotch asked the building owner. ‘I’d like to speak to Mr. Carmichael’s neighbors.’

‘No,’ replied the building owner with a touch of annoyance. ‘The security system’s been acting up. You just need to hit the panel in the right way, and it’ll send you to wherever you want to go. Security cameras are down too.’

Hotch and Rossi shared a look. Their unsub didn’t necessarily live in the building after all. ‘And the door to the building?’

‘It’s busted as well. I called our security company last week, but they haven’t called back yet. I think they’ve got a new guy, or something.’

‘What’s the name of the security company?’ asked Hotch.

‘Gordian, I think.’ He pulled out his wallet, and checked the business card. ‘Yeah, Gordian.’ He gave the card to Hotch.

He and Rossi stepped off to the side. ‘If the unsub’s running the risk of being seen, even with the cameras not working, Mr. Carmichael is either pretty important to him, or he’s getting desperate.’

Rossi nodded. ‘Do you want the neighbors, or the security company?’

‘I’ll take the security company,’ said Hotch firmly.

Rossi nodded, unsurprised. The two left the parking lot in silence.

*             *             *

Prentiss confronted the secretary of Prime Holdings Ltd. She had been waiting almost half an hour for Angela Morrison, Head of Accounting, to finish whatever it was she was doing.

‘Mister Clark,’ she said, looking at his temp badge. ‘I’m with the FBI; I need to talk to Miss Morrison regarding an ongoing investigation. Could you please get her in here?’

Clark shrugged. ‘I called her office, but there’s no answer.’

‘Uh huh,’ Prentiss was unconvinced. ‘Which way is her office?’

Clark pointed vaguely to his left.

Not even pausing to say thank-you, Prentiss went off in the direction of Angela Morrison’s office.


	7. Chapter 7

When the Levee Breaks

** _The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character._ **

_Isabelle Eberhardt_

SEVEN

‘Emily Prentiss, I’m with the FBI.’ She held out a hand to shake that of Angela Morrison. It had been a difficult task to get into the office, even after the incident in the foyer. Angela Morrison was somewhat paranoid after her ordeal, and had demanded to see three forms of ID before letting the FBI agent through. They shook hands briefly now, though, Angela’s grip fairly loose.

‘Have you been in your office all day?’ Prentiss asked curiously.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘The building’s secretary was being a bit... disorganized,’ she finished diplomatically, though it wasn’t exactly the word she had wanted to use.

‘Max?’ asked Angela. ‘He’s an incompetent fool. We’ve asked the temp agency to send someone new next time, but they always send Max.’

Prentiss jumped in there. She was sure if she didn’t stop Angela, the other woman would go on talking about anything _but_ the kidnapping all morning. ‘I need to ask you a few questions about your kidnapping.’

‘Have you caught the guy? Have you got him?’ she asked quickly, hopes raised.

‘Not yet,’ admitted Prentiss. ‘I think it may be related to the recent disappearances. Could you just tell me everything you remember?’

Angela Morrison nodded slowly. ‘I was finishing up late. It was maybe 9, 9:30. I didn’t lock up because there were still one or two people in the building, plus the cleaners. I went out to my car, and I heard this noise – a footstep. I turned to see who was coming, but he’d hit me before I could see.’ She stopped, choking on her words. She had more than a few tears in her eyes, but she endeavoured to continue. ‘Everything after that is mostly blank. I might have been tied to a chair? It felt like I was there for days, but I was never tortured. I remember the cold. Oh God it was so cold.’ She broke down, letting out the tears in racking sobs. Emily grasped her hand. It had been loose in the handshake, but now it almost cut off the circulation. After a few minutes, she calmed down, by which point Emily’s hand had fallen asleep. Then, she continued as if nothing had happened.

‘I woke up in the hospital. They said I’d been drugged pretty heavily, and was found wandering the streets in dirty, sweat-soaked clothes. The police talked to me, but they never found anything. If this is the same man...’ she trailed off, looking blankly at the far wall.

‘I feel broken inside,’ she confessed as Emily got up to leave. ‘Like nothing is ever going to be the same.’

‘No,’ agreed Emily. ‘It never is.’


	8. Chapter 8

When the Levee Breaks

** _A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something._ **

_Wilson Mizner_

EIGHT

By some strange coincidence, the team found themselves converging at the police station at around noon. Each of them had something new to contribute. Morgan stood at the whiteboard with a pen, ready to make the appropriate additions and changes.

‘He’s definitely escalating,’ began Hotch, and Rossi nodded in agreement. ‘He took a risk with this victim, and the victimology is evolving. Instead of targeting specific figures of authority that made him feel inferior, he’s moved on to targeting those who he feels treat him with disrespect.’

‘That is, of course, if it’s the same guy,’ said Morgan. ‘Everyone I talked to said Steven Carmichael was a great guy – no enemies, no significant altercations.’

‘It doesn’t have to be significant,’ countered Emily. ‘This unsub is probably narcissistic enough to think that not making eye contact is a sign of disrespect.’ She was over-exaggerating, and they all knew it.

‘That still doesn’t prove he was taken by our unsub. It could be completely unrelated,’ argued Morgan.

‘He’s still missing, regardless of who took him.’ Emily responded with a little more harshness than she’d intended. She gave Morgan an apologetic look before continuing. ‘Even if this guy wasn’t taken by our unsub, we still have a responsibility to make sure he doesn’t end up dead.’

They all took that in for a moment.

Rossi turned to Morgan. ‘You said no serious altercations. Were there any minor ones? Knocking over trash cans, and the like.’

Morgan grimaced. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people throw a tiff over how someone collects their garbage. People complaining that their bins were scratched. Unbelievable. The problem is, there’s so many, they only remember the really crazy ones. I don’t think our unsub is the kind of guy to make that much of a fuss then and there, but he would get his revenge later.’

‘Alright,’ nodded Hotch. ‘So we’ll assume that Steven Carmichael was abducted by the unsub for now. I spoke to the security company that were responsible for the system in Carmichael’s apartment building. They said that a man was supposed to be coming out on Friday to see what needed to be fixed. Assuming our unsub knew that the system was down, that gives him a plausible connection to the security company.

Morgan added the name of the security company to the list of places their victims had worked. Another pin was added to the map.

Rossi had gleaned nothing of importance from Carmichael’s neighbours, except, it transpired, a recipe for peanut-butter and banana brownies. This was not added to the whiteboard.

Then, it was Emily’s turn to reveal her own findings. ‘I had Garcia do a search for any unsolved kidnapping cases. Four hits, one revealed to be a frat prank gone wrong, but three of which may have been kidnapped by our unsub. They have no significant memories of the incident, except for two of the victims, who reported feeling exceedingly cold. A freezer, or air conditioning, maybe. Of the tortured victims who we could get to speak, two of them spoke of it being cold, and another longed for the fiery embrace of hell, which could be taken to mean that he was feeling the cold as well.’

Morgan added the data to the board, but was still hung up on the notion of previous victims. ‘Are we thinking that there was maybe some kind of stressor that set this guy off? Two stressors, even. One for when he starts torturing, the other for when he changes the victimology. If he changed the victimology,’ he added.

‘I can see a pretty obvious one,’ commented Rossi. ‘Steven Carmichael goes missing the day after the FBI shows up to work on the case. For an unsub with control and authority issues, that’s a big stressor.’

JJ starting flicking through the files in front of her, obviously looking for something significant. She had added to her pile, the three extra files that Emily had printed off. ‘There was only a two day reprieve between the last kidnapping and the first torture,’ she announced. ‘If the local police were looking into the kidnapping, and they interviewed the unsub...’

‘It could have been the first stressor,’ finished Morgan, nodding.

‘Where’s Detective Walters?’ asked Hotch.

‘Break room, I think,’ replied Rossi, who had been the last person to see the detective.

‘We need a list of all the people that were questioned in association with the last kidnapping victim. Cross reference them with those associated with the other victims. Focus on colleagues, or employees. Morgan, get the list, and you, JJ and Prentiss go through it. Rossi, talk to Detective Walters, find out everything you can about this investigation that isn’t in the files. I’ve got a feeling we’re missing something.’

‘What’re you going to do?’ asked Morgan.

‘I need to go explain to the Mayor why someone else went missing.’

Though they were doing what amounted to grunt work, none of the team envied Hotch.


	9. Chapter 9

When the Levee Breaks

** _Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. Rather, it works its way out of our consciousness over time. There is a season of sadness. A season of anger. A season of tranquility. A season of hope._ **

_Robert Veninga_

NINE

It was sad times for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and not simply because of all the victims piling up. No, for the BAU, desperation occurred when they could accurately quantify the day by the type of takeout they ordered. Last night had been pizza, tonight it was Indian. The entire team had spent the last seven hours examining case files, and cross referencing them with other files, tip-line calls, and witness statements. There were only so many connections that Garcia’s equipment could find. In depth examinations took a keen human eye.

It was almost nine o’clock, though, and most eyes were not so much keen as heavy. Emily had fallen asleep atop her pile of cases a good hour and a half ago.

‘I might head back to the hotel,’ said Morgan, after he had yawned for what felt like the hundredth time.

‘Take Emily with you,’ suggested Hotch. He threw a quick glance at JJ. ‘I can keep going,’ she responded with a grim smile.

Morgan stood, unsure of how to approach the situation at hand. She would freak if she found out he had carried her to the car, and yet it seemed wrong to wake her. The decision was made for him, when she woke suddenly, wary of her surroundings.

‘Nightmare?’ asked Hotch.

‘No,’ she replied with some finality. The second or so of hesitation made Hotch sure that she was lying.

It didn’t take much persuasion for Emily to accompany Morgan back to the hotel. Her stubbornness was weakened by the same exhaustion that fuelled her irritability. She tried so hard to hide it, but trained profilers were useful for something after all.

‘How’re you doing?’ He broke the silence as they drove the dark Ridgeview streets.

‘I’ll be better when people stop asking,’ she replied bluntly.

‘You’ll feel better if you talk about it,’ he persisted, trying to maintain a comforting demeanor.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she shot daggers at him.

‘Every time someone asks you if you’re okay, you avoid the question. Like you don’t want anyone to know what you’re really thinking.’

‘I don’t need looking after.’

‘It’s not about trying to protect you; it’s about being there for you.’

‘And when was the last time you let anyone be there for you?’

The argument stopped as quickly as it had started, without another word spoken. For the rest of the short drive, the two avoided eye contact.

*             *             *

The next morning, Emily drove with Rossi again. She didn’t particularly feel like discussing things with Morgan yet. As Rossi got there, she was hanging up her phone for the second morning in a row.

‘Was that Reid?’ Rossi asked.

‘Yeah.’ She seemed a little restrained. To Rossi, this was unsurprising.

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s doing well,’ she said, ‘I got to hear about the health properties of soy milk, so I think we’ll have our Reid back soon enough.’ She left unspoken the words “not like last time”.

There was a brief moment where only the radio and the humming of the engine could be heard. And then:

‘I’ve been having nightmares,’ she said abruptly. ‘I hadn’t had any in a while, and then...after the thing with Cyrus, they just came flooding back. It wasn’t the pain so much as the fact that the pain didn’t bother me.’

He didn’t say anything, so she continued. The fact that he hadn’t pressured her was the reason she felt so comfortable talking to him.

‘It was fourteen years ago, but I can still remember every single moment. Political relations were still tenuous. I was there to visit my mother. I hadn’t seen her in over six months, but the plane lands and no-one is waiting. I tried calling, but the phone lines to an embassy are engaged at the best of times. It was getting dark, and the airport was a fair way from the embassy, so I asked if there was a hotel nearby. An American in a Middle-Eastern country that speaks fluent Arabic – their first impression is spy.’

She stopped.

‘How long?’ asked Rossi.

‘Four months. Growing up, she always made me hide my pain – it’s bad PR to have a kid that cries all the time, I guess. When you’re being tortured...it’s the same principle. Disassociation. You separate the side that feels pain, and focus on the rest. The problem is, the pain is what makes us human. Four months later...I’m regaining consciousness, and I see my mother’s face. I’d been taken by a splinter group. The real radicals. People who weren’t even going to bother checking if I’m actually a spy or not. The first thing she says to me is “we need to get you out of here before the media sees.”’ She had tears rolling down her cheeks now, but she didn’t even notice. They had reached the police station, but neither made a move to get out of the car.

‘It took me...a long time to remember how to be human. And even longer to remember that I’m not always going to be alone. I think...the thing with Cyrus dredged up things that would be best left buried.’

Rossi nodded, understanding. ‘You should speak to Morgan,’ he said, finally. ‘He really does care.’

They left the car, and noticed almost immediately that the atmosphere around the police station had changed.

‘Something happened,’ said Rossi, and they both reverted to work mode. He found Hotch in the conference room. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Steven Carmichael’s body was found this morning,’ said Hotch, and grim didn’t even begin to describe the look on his face.


	10. Chapter 10

When the Levee Breaks

** _I try to avoid looking backward and keep looking upward._ **

_Charlotte Bronte_

TEN

The corpse of Steven Carmichael had been the first they’d seen in days. It was unfortunate that they had failed to save him from the unsub, but it did mean they had new information to work with.

‘Asphyxiation,’ noted Morgan, gloved fingers brushing the bruised neck. ‘Manual strangulation. It’s unusual for a man to kill another man this way. Usually it’s a man strangling a woman; size differences.’

The team had commuted from the police station to Steven Carmichael’s apartment, where the body had been dumped by the unsub.

‘It’s a hell of a risk,’ commented Emily, looking down the hallway. ‘Thin walls, small apartments. Anyone could have heard something and came out to investigate.’

‘This wasn’t exactly Kitty Genovese,’ countered Morgan. ‘Carmichael was already dead when the body was dumped. Providing our unsub was strong enough to get him here without making too much noise, the only thing he had to worry about was people entering or leaving their apartments at three o’clock in the morning.’ Two am had been the T.O.D as determined by the Medical Examiner, and they suspected that the unsub would have wanted to rid himself of the body as soon as possible.

‘If it was the unsub,’ said Emily, reminding Morgan of his previous doubts.

‘If it was the unsub,’ he agreed.

*             *             *

Hotch and Rossi were canvassing the entire building. If anyone had seen something, they needed to know. Rossi was going along Carmichael’s floor, talking to those he had already established a simple rapport.

‘Who is it?’ a voice called through the door, just seconds after Rossi had rapped his knuckles against the hard wood.

‘Agent Rossi, FBI.’ It was the salutation with which he had introduced himself the previous day. She had insisted on calling him Dave, but he feared if he encouraged this behavior, then he would start the conversation on a casual note.

‘Dave?’ The quiet, mousy-haired woman opened the door immediately at the sound of his voice. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Dave.’ She smiled, revealing several missing teeth.

‘Official business, I’m afraid, Gloria,’ he greeted her, with a frown playing upon his lips.

‘Is it Steven? Did you find him?’ she asked fearfully. Though she didn’t know Steven Carmichael well, a death close-by would bring the nightmares crashing back.

‘I’m afraid Steven is dead.’ Rossi confirmed her fears.

‘Come in, have a brownie,’ she invited him.

‘I can’t stay, Gloria. I just need to know if you saw anything.’

‘You’ve got time for one brownie, surely?’ Her eyes seemed to plead, and Rossi relented.

‘One brownie,’ he agreed.

When Rossi had taken the first bite of his brownie, Gloria started to speak. She had seen something this morning, it transpired, in between her bouts of booze-fuelled sleep. Her husband had left three weeks ago, she had explained the previous day, and a few shots of bourbon before bed was the only way she could guarantee sleep.

‘It was maybe two-thirty in the morning. I’d gotten up to get a glass of water. The pills, they make me thirsty. I heard some bumping on the stairs, and then the footsteps of someone walking past my door. I opened it to have a look, but he’d already gone past. I kept it open, just a hair, and I saw him on his way back. He seemed...relieved.’

‘Could you tell me what he looked like?’ asked Rossi, writing notes in his pad.

‘He was tall – very tall. Maybe six foot five. Heavily built. Light hair, youngish. I don’t know, I only got a brief glimpse.’

Several minutes later, Rossi expressed his apologies, and bid farewell. Gloria seemed upset to see him go, but visibly brightened when he handed her his card, in case she remembered anything else.

*             *             *

As much as they pained to admit it, the BAU were running on very few solid leads. The death of Steven Carmichael had yielded a basic description from several witnesses. He was tall, muscular, around thirty-five. All things that they had already gleaned from the profile. There had been no more significant connections worthy of further investigation, and if they didn’t find anything soon, then the local opinion of the FBI would surely be sullied. In spite of this, several members of the BAU had their minds occupied by topics that were hardly work related.

Emily joined Morgan outside, at the far end of the police station car park. They were at just the right angle to watch the sun set. At any other time, it might have been considered romantic, but such a notion was far removed from conscious thought.

‘Hey,’ she said, sitting beside him on the wire fence.

‘Hey.’ If he was surprised to see her there, he didn’t show it.

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you last night. I know you only want to help me get through this, but the truth is...it’s not going to be that easy. I thought I could have handled it myself, but maybe...’ She didn’t want to say the words “I was wrong”.

‘Never be too proud to ask for help,’ Morgan said, putting an arm around her shoulder. They simply sat in silence for several minutes. The sun was almost below the horizon when she began to talk, telling him the same story she had told Rossi that morning.

He stayed silent throughout, though his hand gripped the fence so hard that he might have drawn blood. At the end of the tale, she said something else, something she hadn’t even told Rossi.

‘You know why there was no-one at the airport?’ she didn’t even wait for him to answer, before saying bitterly. ‘She’d forgotten I was coming.’ Suddenly, everything seemed so clear to Morgan – why she didn’t trust anyone to take care of her, why she had placed the impossible burden upon herself.

‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ he said, drawing her closer. He was still holding her when the sound of a gunshot pierced the air.


	11. Chapter 11

When the Levee Breaks

** _On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero._ **

_Chuck Palahniuk_

ELEVEN

Derek Morgan felt a slight sting as the bullet entered his flesh just below the right shoulder. Emily pulled him to the ground, as soon as she had registered the gunshot, but it had been almost a second too late.

‘Can you move?’ she asked, as she pressed her jacket into his wound with one hand. The other hand was holding her gun, waiting for their assailant to try again.

‘I...I think so,’ he said, and he felt the pain then. It was a crescendo, worse than anything he’d ever felt. He couldn’t think about anything else, just the pain.

‘There’re some trees about two meters to your left. Try and use them as cover.’ Before he could ask where she was going, she had already gone, leaving him to crawl towards the trees.

*             *             *

They had heard the gunshot from the police station, a jarring resonance that shook them to the core.

‘Where did it come from?’ asked Hotch, whose hearing was still a little fuzzy.

‘Parking lot,’ Rossi barely had time to say; he was already running out the door.

JJ watched in fear, knowing that she couldn’t follow.

*             *             *

While the bushy expanse at the bottom of the parking lot meant that Morgan had cover, it also meant that the shooter had cover. Emily had heard the crashing of branches as he – or she – had fled on foot. She followed the sounds now, with a strange mix of caution and impatience.

She didn’t have a torch on her – that was the problem. It was just past twilight, and there was just a hint of light still in the air. She could see the trees in her path, but only just. Calling for the shooter to stop would have been an exercise in futility, serving only to warn him of her proximity. Instead, she followed the signs.

‘Emily? Morgan?’ she heard the voices calling in the distance, but ignored them, continuing forward. The best chance she had of catching this shooter was now.

She strained her eyes, seeing a clearing ahead. It would have been a perfect spot for the shooter to ambush her. Thinking so, she focused on the clearing, almost missing the sounds of someone sneaking up behind her. She turned at the last second, arm blocking the impending blow. The gun fell from her grip. She heard the bone snapping, and felt the subsequent pain, but she couldn’t afford to give up now.

He was almost two full heads taller than her, and had a great deal more muscle mass, but he lacked the close combat training she possessed. Of course, a good deal of that combat training counted on having two working arms. She was holding her own fairly well, until her enemy seemed to remember that he had a fully functioning firearm. The bullet struck her in the same place in had Morgan, a fact she was not exactly in the mood to notice. Both arms were incapacitated now, and the blood loss made retaliation all the more difficult. The last thing she felt was a blow across the back of the head, before the abyss consumed her.

*             *             *

Hotch was tending to Morgan’s shoulder when he heard the second gunshot. Rossi and several police officers had spread out, eager to cover as much of the treed area as possible.

Both men looked up sharply at the sound. Morgan tried to get up, but Hotch held him down. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, in what he hoped was a comforting manner. ‘It’ll be okay.

Someone had called an ambulance Hotch realized, hearing the sirens. It was a few more moments before he remembered that it had been him. The paramedics helped Morgan onto a stretcher. Hotch was torn between going with him to the hospital, and staying to help in the search for Emily.

‘Go, man,’ said Morgan, the pain evident in his voice. ‘She needs you more than I do right now.’ There was something enigmatic about what Morgan was saying, but Hotch didn’t waste time arguing.

‘Find her, Hotch,’ Morgan called after his retreating boss. There were the beginnings of tears in his eyes, though he would never admit it to anyone.

*             *             *

Emily woke to darkness and indescribable pain. Both arms were bound behind her, though she didn’t think she would be able to move them, even if they were free. The blood from the gunshot wound had spread across the front of the shirt, and was now dripping into a tiny pool on the concrete floor. Her assailant hadn’t even made an attempt to stop the bleeding, nor had he tended to her other arm, which she feared was badly broken.

Still, she knew she wouldn’t be getting out of this by moaning in pain. She looked around, eyes having finally adjusted to the dark. The room seemed eerily familiar, and it wasn’t until a burst of clarity escaped the pain that she realized the undeniable truth.

The shooter was their unsub.


	12. Chapter 12

When the Levee BreaksTop of Form

** _Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie._ **

_William Shakespeare_

TWELVE

‘Over here,’ a voice called, and Hotch’s head shot up. He had been searching for his missing agent for the better part of half an hour. He didn’t think that finding her would take this long, and he was getting edgy. The voice had come from behind him, closer to the police station than the road on the other side of the trees. He ran back through the trees, branches slapping at his body. He ignored them.

The owner of the voice had been Officer Sternberg, a man Hotch hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to.

‘What is it?’ asked Hotch, breathlessly.

Sternberg shone his torch at a spot on the ground. Blood. Hotch’s heart skipped a beat. He examined the scene with a profiler’s eye. Someone had been shot, but they didn’t fall right away. A disturbance of the ground – that could have been a body hitting the dirt. They weren’t dragged away. Carried, most likely – there were boot prints right next to the patches of blood.

‘Someone stood next to the blood, and then walked back this way, and then back to the blood again.’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the work body, knowing full well whose body it would have been. ‘Then...the prints – heavier, as if he were carrying something – walked in the direction of the road.’

Officer Sternberg checked the direction of the prints. ‘They stopped at this tree,’ he said, running the torch up the trunk. ‘There’s a hollow here.’ He shone the torch inside the tree, and then assumed an expression of excitement. ‘In here.’

Hotch saw what had gotten Sternberg so intensified. He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, sure that the unsub wouldn’t have left fingerprints, but careful nonetheless.

‘Find something?’ Rossi and Detective Walters had been searching at the opposite end of the trees, but they had heard Sternberg’s call. In circumstances like these, you kept a wary ear for any news.

Hotch grimaced. It was a face Rossi had seen many times before, but never so dejected. He removed the objects from the tree hollow, showing them to Rossi; a service pistol, a cell phone, and a DVD case.

‘The unsub’s got her,’ said Rossi with a melancholy understanding.

*             *             *

Emily woke up, thinking it was hours later. In reality it had been something like half an hour, but already, things were considerably different.

The pain had dulled a bit, and the fuzziness in her mind told her that she was at the very least on painkillers. She had been stripped to her underclothes; the bullet wound had been treated somewhat carelessly, as if by someone who wasn’t quite sure what they were doing. She didn’t see the reason in healing her just to injure her again. Though, she acknowledged, not all psychopathic kidnappers saw reason. She corrected herself subconsciously; this guy was more of a sadist than a psychopath, though there were psychopathic tendencies.

A blank face shone a light into her eyes. No, she corrected herself again. Not a blank face, a masked face. The unsub.

‘Not so self-important now,’ he muttered. She had heard the voice before, but wasn’t quite sure where. Of course, that didn’t exactly narrow it down much – if he had taken her, it was because she had pissed him off in some way, and that generally required some kind of meeting.

It was a conscious effort for Emily not to respond. Antagonizing him would just piss him off even more.

‘Do you know what this is?’ He held up something that looked like a long rod. Her vision blurred, she couldn’t quite make it out. The question was answered, though, when he pressed it up against her neck. The electricity arced through her body, and she tried to shut the pain out of her mind, difficult though it was.

‘Cattle prod.’ He answered the question for her. ‘5000 volts. 5000 can be fatal, but none of my victims have died from it yet.’ He shocked her again, and she let out a half-moan. ‘Well, not from the prod, anyway.’

He started to boast, and she took a few moments to clear her mind of the agony. She knew she could stand the torture, if she closed her mind to it. The problem was, she would destroy the humanity she had worked so hard to achieve.

It was a tough choice to make; humanity or sanity.

She still wasn’t sure which she’s pick.


	13. Chapter 13

When the Levee Breaks

** _All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them._ **

_Galileo Galilei_

THIRTEEN

Morgan found himself waking in a hospital bed, a tired, pregnant blonde at his side.

‘Hey,’ she said, noticing the flickering of his eyes. ‘You just got out of surgery.’

‘Where’s Emily?’ was the first thing he said, tongue fighting the effects of the general anesthetic he had been administered. He sat up dizzily, and fell back almost instantaneously.

‘You need to rest.’ JJ put a hand on his shoulder, but even her reassurance could not hide the fear in her eyes.

‘JJ, tell me what’s going on.’ His dark eyes mirrored her blue ones.

‘We think the unsub’s got her,’ she said, eventually. When Reid had been kidnapped, Morgan had responded with frustration, anger almost. Now, JJ could only see pain, and she had no idea why. When he didn’t say anything, she continued.

‘Hotch called Reid. He and Garcia are on their way up.’

‘I thought he was off until next week,’ Morgan said.

‘Practically speaking, we’re four agents down.’ She patted her belly unconsciously. ‘We need everyone we can get.

‘I-I need to get out of this bed.’ He attempted to get up again, and his attempt was less successful than the previous.

‘I called your mother,’ JJ said, in an attempt to calm him down. ‘I told her you would call as soon as you got out of surgery.’

He nodded. ‘Did you...’ His voice strangled, unable to get the words out. JJ put an arm on his uninjured shoulder.

‘I tried to get through, but it takes a few hours, and that’s if you _are_ on official business.’ She saw the downcast look on his face, and added, ‘don’t worry, we’ll find her.’ She put on a brave face, and grasped his unbandaged hand.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘But at what cost?’

*             *             *

The video of Steven Carmichael’s torture was significantly shorter than the others had been. They had assumed that the shorter period of death was due to escalation, but they were soon proved wrong.

On screen, the unsub choked Carmichael into unconsciousness, and revived him, several times over. The fourth time, he didn’t wake up. The unsub made no sound, but was evident that he was agitated at the unexpected occurrence. The footage ended there, not showing further reactions from him.

‘He doesn’t want us to see him out of control,’ concluded Rossi.

‘But he _did _want us to see Carmichael’s death. To show us that even if the death was accidental, he holds all the cards.’

Both men went to great lengths to keep their voices level.

‘We need to get a list of everyone she’s talked to in the past two days. Victims, witnesses. Everyone.’

Until Reid got here, Hotch and Rossi effectively were the team. They were taking on the duties of six people, and if they couldn’t take it, one of their agents would pay the price.

Rossi nodded. ‘You check out her hotel room. Anything in there that might help explain why.’

Neither man got up to move.

‘She spoke to you this morning, didn’t she?’ Hotch said, but it wasn’t a question so much as a statement of fact.

‘How much do you know?’

‘I’ve pieced together a bit, but I’d rather hear the whole story.’

Rossi hesitated. She had spoken to him in confidence, but telling Hotch was important.

As Rossi told him, Hotch tried to keep his face expressionless, but it was not an easy task.

*             *             *

Sleep deprivation was an experience she was fairly familiar with. Usually it was self-inflicted; staying up late to finish paperwork, or to solve a case. That kind you only noticed when you stopped working and realized that you hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Sleep deprivation as torture was different. Every waking second, there was nothing to focus on but your surroundings, and the thoughts in your head.

She tried to focus beyond the pain. The pain, the suffering – that belonged to someone else. Someone that was strapped to a dentist’s chair in another place, another time. The music blasted into her ears, light bright in her eyes. She felt the cold against her skin. Muscles, bones and pain receptors screamed in agony.

She closed her eyes, and fought desperately to be somewhere else.


	14. Chapter 14

When the Levee Breaks

** _What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness._ **

_M. C. Escher_

FOURTEEN

Hotch felt uneasy searching Emily’s hotel room. It was highly unlikely that the unsub had targeted her based on personal characteristics, but he had to cover all his bases. Especially in a case like this.

He was examining a well thumbed copy of _Catch-22 _when his phone rang. He returned the book to the bedside table and checked the Caller Id.

Strauss.

‘Hotchner.’

‘Is there a reason you brought Agent Reid in before he completed his psychological evaluation.’ Hotch checked his watch. It was almost 11pm. If Strauss was bothering to call him this late, she must have been pretty angry.

‘I need as many field agents as I can get. I weighed the options, and I felt that Dr. Reid was ready to return to work. If there’s a problem with that, then you can take it out on me, not him.’

‘You’re willing to risk your career to save the life of an agent?’ She sounded firm, but somehow, more human.

‘Yes, I am.’ He replied without hesitation.

*             *             *

The drive from Quantico seemed to have taken record time for Reid and Garcia. Rossi wondered idly how many times they would have been pulled over if they hadn’t been driving an FBI issue SUV.

‘How long’s she been gone?’ was the first thing Reid asked as he set foot in the station.

‘Almost six hours,’ replied Rossi.

‘I...she said she wasn’t coming back to work until Thursday. She shouldn’t have even been here.’

‘Focus,’ Rossi reminded him. ‘We need to go over the profile, see if there’s something we missed. Garcia, I need anything you can get from the latest DVD.’

Garcia was unusually subdued. She nodded quickly, and set up her laptop.

‘Hotch is on his way back from the hotel, JJ’s coming from the hospital. We can start without them.’

As they had hoped, Reid was able to pick up a few things they had missed. ‘He’s causing pain, but avoiding disfigurement. It suggests an emphasis on the psychological torture rather than physical. He was probably raised by a single father, who abused him physically and psychologically, but not sexually.’ They were all theories that had been discussed previously, but Reid seemed certain.

‘He probably tortures the victims in his place of residence he needs a certain level of closeness. He can’t have the control he desires if he isn’t close-by.’

‘Most likely a house,’ agreed Reid. ‘It could have soundproofing. He doesn’t want the neighbours to hear the screams.’

‘It probably has a cold-room,’ suggested Rossi. He thought for a second, and then added. ‘All of this costs money. If our unsub is in a menial job, then how is he affording all of his torture equipment?’

‘Inheritance? Theft?’ Morgan spoke from the door. He had his arm in a sling, and JJ followed him.

‘Don’t even try and talk him out of it,’ she said, a dark look in her eyes. ‘He refused to let me leave unless he came with me. We had to stage a hospital break.’

Rossi raised an eyebrow, but Reid continued unhindered; Morgan’s stubbornness was both familiar and understandable. ‘I don’t think it’s theft. He can’t run the risk of getting caught. Inheritance is possible...’

‘Yeah, Garcia, run a search for rich, dead white guys.’

Garcia didn’t answer. She had leapt on Morgan the moment he’d entered the room, and was still hugging him.

‘What was that?’ she asked, finally letting go.

‘Never mind,’ he said.

‘If he has an inheritance, then why is he working?’ asked JJ.

‘Inheritance doesn’t last forever.’

‘Hey.’ Hotch entered at that moment, completely unsurprised at Morgan’s presence. ‘Anything new?’

‘No,’ said a dejected Morgan. ‘Nothing new.’

‘Anything in the hotel room?’

Morgan looked up. ‘You checked out her hotel room? Nothing in the victimology suggests that anyone was targeted for any reason other than their interactions with the unsub.’

‘I know,’ agreed Hotch. ‘I just...We need to be thorough.’ There was something else in his voice, something that suggested he wasn’t saying something. Everyone else was too on edge to notice. If the unsub was degenerating, that was nothing compared to the collapse of the BAU. They knew, though. Knew that no matter how tired they got, they had to keep working.

*             *             *

The music was deafening. It was a simple method of torture, sleep deprivation. The unsub himself could go catch his forty winks while the torture continued. If he was sleeping, though, it meant she wasn’t being watched.

She thought it was around the middle of the night; sensory deprivation was another tried and tested torture technique. She thought it was around midnight, maybe. She didn’t think she’d been there that long; the unsub liked to get started pretty quickly. It would have been a few hours at most.

The straps on the chair were loosely fastened. He was an amateur. He had kidnapped eleven people, tortured eight and killed one, but he still had no idea how the human mind really worked. In times of desperation, people will go to any lengths to survive. Though both arms were in agony, she worked at loosening the straps even further. He had made a mistake in assuming the injury amounted to incapacitation. Eleven was so few compared to the dozens – hundreds – Emily had worked with in her years of service with the FBI.

Humans were more resilient than anyone gave them credit for, but it took extraordinary circumstances to bring that out. The right strap gave after what felt like hours of work.

She knew two things for certain, then. She wouldn’t let the pain get to her, and if it came to life or death, she wouldn’t go down without a fight.


	15. Chapter 15

When the Levee Breaks

** _To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state._ **

_Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_

FIFTEEN

Screaming fingers found the doorknob to the cold room, and twisted it gently. Apprehensively, she stepped out, a knife from the torture rack in one hand.

She found herself inside a house, and definitely not the kind of house that she’d expect from a psychopathic sadist. Antiques lined the walls. Classic art, vases, even a sculpture or two. What she really wanted to find, though, was a phone.

She found one in what appeared to be an office. Shining green numbers on a digital clock informed her that it was a little after three AM. They would just have to suffer through being woken up.

Shaking, the screaming fingers dialed out a familiar number.

*             *             *

Aaron Hotchner felt his phone start to vibrate. He pulled it out of his pocket, and checked the Caller ID. Number withheld. He answered it, and his face turned white.

‘Garcia! Garcia? Where is she?’ he yelled.

‘Toilet,’ shrugged Morgan. ‘Who is it?’

Aaron put the phone on speaker.

‘...house, a big house,’ Emily’s shaken voice emitted from the tiny phone speakers. Several voices spoke at once.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Morgan and JJ, while Rossi said, ‘What else can you tell us?’ Reid had fallen asleep at one point but sat up abruptly at Hotch’s yelling.

‘Garcia!’ he yelled again. They needed a trace.

‘I think...I know I spoke to him some time yesterday. A voice, I just can’t place it. An office worker, I think?’ her voice was weak, and they could all hear it.

‘Are you okay?’ Morgan asked again, eyes fearful.

‘I may need a medic,’ she admitted with what sounded like guilt. There was a crashing sound on the other end of the line, and Emily swore. Everyone sat up quickly.

‘Garcia!’ Hotch yelled again. The technical analyst entered the room at marathon speeds. ‘What do you need?’

‘Trace the call.’

They heard the sounds of a struggle, and a violent one at that. There was no way of knowing who was winning and who was losing. There was a clattering as the phone was picked up again. They all held their breaths in concern.

‘I hope you said goodbye to your friend,’ the male voice said, before hanging up, leaving the BAU in complete and total silence.


	16. Chapter 16

When the Levee Breaks

** _In a mad world only the mad are sane._ **

_Akira Kurosawa_

SIXTEEN

Footsteps had awoken him early that morning. He hadn’t expected his captive to escape her bounds. He didn’t like unexpected things happening. They made him feel as though he wasn’t in control. He made a mental note to incapacitate the rest properly.

She had gotten a call out to her colleagues. He’d found her in the study, whispering urgently into the phone. She must have heard him coming, as she dropped then phone and blocked his attack. It had been the same arm with which she’d blocked his attack the previous night, and she groaned in pain as the broken bone shifted.

She lifted the other arm – there was a knife in her hand. She had some skill with the knife, but that arm too was near incapacitation. She sliced across his shoulder, blood streaking the stark white pyjamas.

‘Bitch,’ he muttered, and kicked her legs out from under her. She fell into the nearby desk, knocking computer equipment everywhere. Out of sheer desperation, she threw a keyboard at him. It made a strange clunking sound as it struck him hard across the face. In another circumstance, she might have found it amusing.

She tried to get up, but her body failed her. Even adrenaline had its limits. Still, not wanting to take his chances, the unsub pressed a foot into her freshly bleeding gunshot wound. She gritted her teeth and tried not to make a sound, though the pain was unbearable.

He picked up the phone, which had been knocked off the desk. ‘I hope you said good-bye to your friend.’

He hung up, and then kicked her into unconsciousness.

*             *             *

The team found that there was nothing more that they could do until the start of business hours. Urgent though it was, they doubted that any witnesses would appreciate being awoken at the crack of dawn to answer questions. So for a lack of anything better to do, they were sleeping. Or at the very least, trying to.

Morgan had already fallen into a deep slumber. He had been reluctant, but the painkillers still in his system had overridden any such desires. Garcia was lying on his good shoulder, eyes red with tears. She had panicked when running the trace; it had taken three tries to get it running, and by the time it was, the unsub had hung up. They had narrowed it down to a ten mile radius, but even that was a needle in a haystack.

JJ’s face mirrored Garcia’s, though her eyes were shut, and she was breathing heavily. She had fallen asleep before anyone had the chance to make the suggestion that she lie down, and now that she was asleep, they didn’t want to move her. She had been crying more than anyone, giving the excuse that hormones were having an effect.

‘I feel guilty, almost,’ she had confided in Hotch a few hours earlier. Before the phone call. ‘I’ve been focusing so much on the baby, and Will, that I haven’t had time to spend time with my friends. And now I might not get a chance to.’

It was natural that they all felt guilty. It had happened when Elle was shot, when Reid was kidnapped. Everyone on the team felt that they could have done something to prevent a bad thing from happening. The truth was that bad things were going to happen whether they liked it or not.

Hotch had tried to comfort JJ, but he was struggling with his own guilt. Was he that bad of a supervisor that Emily had felt she couldn’t entrust him with her secrets? Perhaps, if she felt that she’d been able to trust him, she wouldn’t have been taken.

‘You couldn’t have stopped it,’ said Rossi softly, noticing the tired, stressed and above all, guilty look on Hotch’s face. Hotch gave a wan smile at the attempted reassurance, and then went back to looking guilty.

Rossi’s expression was empty; if he was feeling anything, he wasn’t showing it.

Reid had been having nightmares since his time at the compound. Part of it had been Emily’s actions, but for the most part, it was Cyrus. He had felt a strange connection with the narcissistic cult leader, in spite of the horrific things he had done. He knew the nightmares would change if he drifted into REM sleep. No longer the sound of gunfire, the subsequent explosion. The next time he slept, he would hear whimpering, the sound of glass smashing. The same sounds he had heard in the compound, and on the phone again this morning. Even if he closed his eyes, he’d hear it.

Six months ago, at a time like this he would have been craving the Dilaudid. Fingers twitching, wanting to plunge the needle into his arm without a second thought. He didn’t even feel the urge, now. The fear overshadowed that desire.


	17. Chapter 17

When the Levee Breaks

** _In a mad world only the mad are sane._ **

_Akira Kurosawa_

SIXTEEN

Footsteps had awoken him early that morning. He hadn’t expected his captive to escape her bounds. He didn’t like unexpected things happening. They made him feel as though he wasn’t in control. He made a mental note to incapacitate the rest properly.

She had gotten a call out to her colleagues. He’d found her in the study, whispering urgently into the phone. She must have heard him coming, as she dropped then phone and blocked his attack. It had been the same arm with which she’d blocked his attack the previous night, and she groaned in pain as the broken bone shifted.

She lifted the other arm – there was a knife in her hand. She had some skill with the knife, but that arm too was near incapacitation. She sliced across his shoulder, blood streaking the stark white pyjamas.

‘Bitch,’ he muttered, and kicked her legs out from under her. She fell into the nearby desk, knocking computer equipment everywhere. Out of sheer desperation, she threw a keyboard at him. It made a strange clunking sound as it struck him hard across the face. In another circumstance, she might have found it amusing.

She tried to get up, but her body failed her. Even adrenaline had its limits. Still, not wanting to take his chances, the unsub pressed a foot into her freshly bleeding gunshot wound. She gritted her teeth and tried not to make a sound, though the pain was unbearable.

He picked up the phone, which had been knocked off the desk. ‘I hope you said good-bye to your friend.’

He hung up, and then kicked her into unconsciousness.

*             *             *

The team found that there was nothing more that they could do until the start of business hours. Urgent though it was, they doubted that any witnesses would appreciate being awoken at the crack of dawn to answer questions. So for a lack of anything better to do, they were sleeping. Or at the very least, trying to.

Morgan had already fallen into a deep slumber. He had been reluctant, but the painkillers still in his system had overridden any such desires. Garcia was lying on his good shoulder, eyes red with tears. She had panicked when running the trace; it had taken three tries to get it running, and by the time it was, the unsub had hung up. They had narrowed it down to a ten mile radius, but even that was a needle in a haystack.

JJ’s face mirrored Garcia’s, though her eyes were shut, and she was breathing heavily. She had fallen asleep before anyone had the chance to make the suggestion that she lie down, and now that she was asleep, they didn’t want to move her. She had been crying more than anyone, giving the excuse that hormones were having an effect.

‘I feel guilty, almost,’ she had confided in Hotch a few hours earlier. Before the phone call. ‘I’ve been focusing so much on the baby, and Will, that I haven’t had time to spend time with my friends. And now I might not get a chance to.’

It was natural that they all felt guilty. It had happened when Elle was shot, when Reid was kidnapped. Everyone on the team felt that they could have done something to prevent a bad thing from happening. The truth was that bad things were going to happen whether they liked it or not.

Hotch had tried to comfort JJ, but he was struggling with his own guilt. Was he that bad of a supervisor that Emily had felt she couldn’t entrust him with her secrets? Perhaps, if she felt that she’d been able to trust him, she wouldn’t have been taken.

‘You couldn’t have stopped it,’ said Rossi softly, noticing the tired, stressed and above all, guilty look on Hotch’s face. Hotch gave a wan smile at the attempted reassurance, and then went back to looking guilty.

Rossi’s expression was empty; if he was feeling anything, he wasn’t showing it.

Reid had been having nightmares since his time at the compound. Part of it had been Emily’s actions, but for the most part, it was Cyrus. He had felt a strange connection with the narcissistic cult leader, in spite of the horrific things he had done. He knew the nightmares would change if he drifted into REM sleep. No longer the sound of gunfire, the subsequent explosion. The next time he slept, he would hear whimpering, the sound of glass smashing. The same sounds he had heard in the compound, and on the phone again this morning. Even if he closed his eyes, he’d hear it.

Six months ago, at a time like this he would have been craving the Dilaudid. Fingers twitching, wanting to plunge the needle into his arm without a second thought. He didn’t even feel the urge, now. The fear overshadowed that desire.


	18. Chapter 18

When the Levee Breaks

** _History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again._ **

_Maya Angelou_

EIGHTEEN

It was five o’clock in the afternoon before Hotch managed to finish up all his interviews. To his chagrin, he had made no case-breaking developments.

Neither had anyone else, it seemed.

They needed a casebreaker. One small bit of information that made everything fall into place. Meanwhile, though, they told each other of the day’s findings.

‘...every search parameter we could think of, man. Nothing,’ Morgan was saying.

A strange thought struck Hotch. ‘The list,’ he said. ‘Some of the people I spoke to – their names weren’t on the list. They were temps. Temps aren’t always included on full-time employee lists.’

‘It does give a solid workplace connection.’

‘You can’t temp in a police station,’ pointed out JJ, referring to the seventh victim.

‘But the police would have been questioning suspects,’ Reid said.

‘Okay, Baby girl. Work your magic. White male, between 25 and 35, living alone in a house, working for a temp agency.’

‘Still a lot of names on that list,’ remarked Garcia.

‘No,’ said Hotch. ‘We need to call the companies themselves, and get that list.’

Each member of the team went for a phone. Ten minutes later, they had a list of temp workers for each company.

‘Are there any names that keep cropping up?’ Hotch asked Reid, who was glancing at each list, names stored in his eidetic memory.

‘Four,’ announced Reid. ‘Terry Macquarie, Max Clark, Lorelle Harding and Casey Redding.’

‘Run those against the profile,’ Morgan told Garcia, holding a breath.

‘Nothing,’ she announced. Morgan thumped the table with his good arm.

‘What if he doesn’t fit the profile?’ wondered Reid. Morgan looked up at him, eyes almost hopeful.

‘Remove the age parameters,’ suggested Reid. ‘No,’ he corrected himself. ‘Widen them. 20 to 40.’

‘Nothing.’

‘What if he isn’t living alone?’ wondered JJ.

Garcia shrugged, and removed that requirement. ‘Terry Macquarie, 21. Lives with his parents and sister.’

‘No,’ said three voices in unison.

‘Max Clark, 37. Lives with his father.’ Tap tap. Frown. ‘His father, who, according to other records, died over six months ago. Clerical error, maybe.’

‘Not if he changed the records. When did Clark work for the victims? Was it in the weeks before the abductions?’

‘Yes, in most cases,’ nodded Garcia. ‘But he’s worked for some of them several times.’

‘This is our guy,’ said Hotch, momentarily stunned. He had been hoping for a casebreaking revelation, but he wasn’t expecting to get it.

They all but ran to the parking lot, Hotch collecting Detective Walters and some back-up on his way.

*             *             *

‘They questioned me again today,’ he said, moving the water-dripping device away from her forehead. She blinked, several times. She could feel her heart racing.

‘It’s so...exhilarating. To know that they’re so close, yet so far.’

‘Don’t underestimate them,’ she muttered. It was the first sentence she had spoken to him in the past two days. He seemed intrigued.

‘You’re not like the others,’ he said. ‘I spent days – weeks – trying to break them. You were broken before I even got here. You haven’t screamed once.’

‘This? This is nothing.’

He seemed disappointed. ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he whispered, wrapping his hands around her throat. She felt the air flow stop, the fingers already bruising. She sunk slowly back into the abyss.

*             *             *

‘We don’t have a warrant,’ explained Detective Walters.

Hotch looked at him, and then back at his team. Rossi and Reid had their vests strapped on, guns already out. Morgan, JJ and Garcia stood back further, waiting apprehensively.

‘I don’t care,’ decided Hotch. ‘I don’t want the death of one of my agents to be because we couldn’t get a judge to sign off on a warrant.’ He started walking in the direction of the house.

‘They’ll crucify you,’ Walters called after him. Hotch kept walking. Reid and Rossi followed. Walters looked on, stunned. Then he thought of the police officer that he’d failed to protect. The victims whose lives had been shattered by this sadistic son of a bitch.

‘I guess they’ll crucify me then too.’ He waved his men forward. ‘This one’s on me, guys.’


	19. Chapter 19

When the Levee Breaks

** _Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies._ **

_Ralph Waldo Emerson_

NINETEEN

He withdrew his fingers from her neck, frowning. He hadn’t been getting the buzz he normally did, and that surprised him. The others, they had screamed, begged, pleaded for him to stop. It was so much more satisfying when they cared he was in control, when they cared that he held their life in his hands. She knew, but she just didn’t seem to give a damn.

He set a goal in his mind. To make her scream. To _make _her care that he was in control. Because if he couldn’t do that, then he wasn’t really in control at all.

That, though, could wait until after he had made dinner.

He tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants, and shut the cold-room door behind him.

*             *             *

‘This guy isn’t going to back down,’ Rossi whispered to Hotch, as they prepared to enter the house. ‘Being in the hands of the authorities is about as emasculating as it gets. He’s going to go down fighting.’

Hotch nodded, and kicked the door open.

*             *             *

Max Clark was in the kitchen when he heard the crashing sound of the door being kicked open. He was momentarily startled, but recovered quickly.

He had planned for this.

He knew that one day. One day they would come for him, and when they did, he would be ready. Because he was the one that was in control now.

He ran for the cold-room door, gun in his hand.

*             *             *

She kept her eyes closed as she heard him enter the room. He was moving quickly, not caring how much noise he made.

‘They’re all going to die,’ he muttered. She wondered what he was talking about. It all became sickeningly clear when she heard voices. Voices calling her name.

He undid the straps that secured her to the chair. She feigned unconsciousness.

‘Max Clark, drop the weapon.’ Hotch’s voice. She felt the cold harsh metal of the gun against her neck. Her feet brushed the floor.

‘This house is already filling with gas,’ Clark said. She couldn’t see his grin, but she could imagine that it was there. ‘If you fire one shot, it will go up in flames.’

‘Put the gun down, Max,’ warned Hotch. ‘If this house explodes, then you’ll die too.’

‘I know,’ his voice was elated. ‘It’s so empowering, to choose the time and place of your own death. I pity the rest of you, no control over your own existence.’

She opened her eyes slowly, hoping that the others in the room would not react. “In three,” she mouthed at Hotch, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

One...

Two...

Three.

She pulled down, away from his grip, reaching for his gun hand as she did. If the trigger went off, then they were all dead. He would have been stronger than her, even without the injuries to her arms. The momentum of the struggle sent them crashing into a nearby table. Still, it achieved the desired result; the gun fell from his hands. Hotch kicked it away, leveling his own weapon at Max Clark’s head.

Emily pulled herself away from the weapons aimed at the man who had, until very recently, been an unsub. Help came from both sides in the form of Rossi and Reid. They were careful not to exacerbate her wounds.

Hotch reached for his handcuffs, while Max Clark reached for a knife that had fallen from the table. ‘You’ll never take me,’ he whispered, plunging the knife into his chest. There was not a dismayed face amongst the law enforcement officers present.

‘Suspect down. Bring in the medics,’ Detective Walters called into his radio.

‘We’ve got you now,’ said Hotch, putting his suit jacket around Emily’s shoulders. She flinched at the material contacting her injuries, but seemed grateful for the protection against the cold.

Then, without warning, she fell to her knees, heaving the contents of her stomach onto Hotch’s shiny black shoes.

*             *             *

Morgan, JJ and Garcia had been waiting impatiently a good distance from the house. When the call came over the radio, their response times were better than those of the paramedics, who entered the house just behind them.

‘That way,’ pointed a uniformed officer, who was seeing to it that there was no more gas coming into the house. Clark had not been lying – if any one of them had pulled the trigger, they would have been burnt to a crisp.

‘Emily!’ called Morgan, as he entered the cold-room. She looked up at her field-restricted colleagues, smiling weakly.

‘How’s the arm?’ she asked him. He shook his head. He wanted so much to pull her into a hug, but knew that he would probably do more harm than good.

‘Can I ride with her?’ he asked the paramedic that was helping her onto a stretcher. The paramedic shrugged.

‘Whatever,’ he said, and Morgan took the non-committal response to be an undeniable confirmation, running after the stretcher.

The rest of the team looked at each other tiredly, and for the first time in almost twenty-four hours, a great weight was lifted off their shoulders.


	20. Chapter 20

When the Levee Breaks

** _Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do._ **

_Confucius_

TWENTY

She awoke in a hospital bed, blinking rapidly. The entire team was standing around her, looking about as bad as she felt.

She tested out her tongue. ‘Did Garcia hack a florist’s computer, or something?’ The sheer amount of plant-life in the room was astonishing. If it weren’t for the IV and the monitors, she could have sworn she was stuck in some crazy, hallucinogen induced dream.

‘We think so,’ admitted Hotch, nudging aside the large fern that took up most of the table that he was sitting on.

‘How’re you feeling?’ asked JJ, a little guiltily, adding, ‘You got out of surgery about three hours ago.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Emily, after a few moments’ pause.

‘Girl, you’re in a room full of profilers,’ Morgan responded, though it was not without some amusement.

‘And I’m not blind either,’ she reasoned. ‘You’ve all got bags under your eyes, and two days worth of stubble. Take care of yourselves before you start worrying about me.’

No-one even thought about leaving. ‘We’re your friends,’ persisted Reid. ‘We’re allowed to care.’

‘Well fortunately for you, I’ve got a shitload of morphine that’s doing a pretty good job of dulling the pain.’ She hesitated looking at each of them in turn. ‘But I guess they’ll stop giving it to me eventually, so...I guess I wouldn’t mind if you stuck around.’

Them being, as Morgan had said, a room full of profilers, they understood her roundabout way of appreciating their presence. She was still stubborn enough to not ask for it directly, though.

‘We finally got through to your mother,’ Hotch said conversationally, though he knew he was broaching a topic that was anything but. Emily said nothing, so he continued. ‘She’s flying in to Washington on Wednesday.

‘I’ll be out of hospital by then?’ asked Emily hopefully.

‘We’ll know when you do.’ Rossi nodded to the door, where a white coated doctor was standing. He seemed reluctant to come in, somewhat intimidated by the occupants of the room.

‘It’s alright,’ Emily told him. ‘They don’t bite.’

He gave her a look, and asked, ‘Do you want them here for this?’

‘They’re fine,’ she assured him.

He nodded, and rattled off a list of the injuries she had sustained, most of which were unsurprising. They amounted to a broken arm, a few broken ribs, a gunshot wound, second-degree electrical burns, a bruised larynx, and various other cuts and bruises, few of which she could not consciously remember receiving.

‘...and no signs of sexual assault,’ he concluded. The team breathed a sigh of relief; it had not occurred with any of the previous victims, but the BAU had an uncanny predisposition to assume the worst.

‘I would recommend psychiatric treatment. Often the effects of torture leave far greater mental scars than physical ones.’ Emily went to great lengths to keep her face blank. She nodded at this suggestion, and assured him that she would visit a psychiatrist at the earliest available opportunity.

She asked when she would be able to leave the hospital.

‘The day after tomorrow,’ he assured her. She nodded again. If she could endure two days of torture, then she could last two days in a hospital.

*             *             *

She had, of course, underestimated her threshold for boredom. There was nothing to really do in a hospital room, save for flicking through the TV channels. They didn’t even have cable. With one arm in a cast, and the other increasingly numb, she found it difficult to turn the pages of her book.

‘Want me to read to you?’ Morgan was standing at the door, his own arm in a sling.

‘Shouldn’t you be finishing up the case?’ she frowned, letting the book close over her fingers.

‘Well technically speaking, I need to be cleared for duty. Even clean-up.’ He sat on the chair beside the bed, and picked up the book she had been attempting to read. ‘_Catch-22_. Where are you up to?’

‘Chapter twenty-three,’ she said blankly, her eyes glazing over. He noticed this almost insignificant act, and put a hand on the bed.

‘Hey, are you alright?’

She looked him in the eye. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I will be.’

He read to her until her eyes had drifted shut, and she began to sleep.


	21. Epilogue

When the Levee Breaks

** _The truth is rarely pure and never simple._ **

_Oscar Wilde_

EPILOGUE

It had been two weeks since the events of Ridgeview; a time in which another case had been solved by the BAU. It had been a busy month. Aaron Hotchner sat at his desk, head in his hands. His brief solitude was interrupted by a knock on the door.

‘Sir?’ He looked up. There was only one person who ever called him “Sir” in that tone of voice.

‘Emily? What are you doing here?’ Her left arm was still in a cast, and it was clear that the right arm hadn’t fully healed either. She held it awkwardly.

‘I needed to give you my report.’ She put the report haphazardly on his desk. It looked to be somewhat thicker than those of the rest of his team – she was required to detail her ordeal, or at the very least, what she remembered of it.

They had found the video footage of the cold-room, showing them the entirety of the previous victims’ experiences. When it came to Emily’s footage, JJ and Garcia had refused to watch altogether, and Reid had only lasted twenty minutes. There was a great deal in the video that she clearly either did not remember, or did not want to tell.

‘Sorry it took so long. It’s hard to type in a cast.’ She smiled guiltily.

‘You’re okay?’ he asked. ‘With writing it, I mean.’

‘I told you before,’ she replied, though not with irritation, ‘That’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’

‘Rossi told me,’ he explained. She nodded slowly, and opened her mouth, but Hotch beat her to it.

‘But I know you didn’t tell Rossi the whole truth. Or Morgan either for that matter.’

She attempted to shrug, but was somewhat hampered by the cast. ‘I’ll tell them when they’re ready.’

‘It’s a pretty important detail to miss.’

‘Which one?’ She was clearly baiting him. Wanting to see how much he really knew.

‘I read the file,’ he explained. ‘You told them that you were accused of being a spy. What you didn’t mention was that you were, in fact, in the employ of the CIA at the time.’

She smiled at that. ‘Worst covert operative ever. I wasn’t even on assignment.’

‘I know. Which leads me to the second detail.’ He looked up, to gauge her reaction. Her face was blank, an expression which she had seemingly mastered over the course of the last few weeks. ‘You weren’t alone at the time of your abduction. Your husband and son were with you.’

She looked down, wanting desperately to avoid his eyes. He reprimanded her, but not in an angry way.

‘These are the kinds of secrets that come back to bite us in the ass, Prentiss.’ She returned her gaze; she didn’t think she’d ever heard him use the word “ass”.

‘When you’re ready to reveal all the skeletons in your closet, Sir. Let me know.’ She nodded to him, and then left the offices of the BAU, farewelling friends and colleagues on her way.


End file.
